These three pieces are a reflection on the Jewish High Holidays. The Holidays begin with Rosh Hasanah, the Jewish New Year, and ends ten days later with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. This Holiday experience is focused on the concept of repentance and personal as well as community renewal. We strive to improve ourselves and our community with prayer, repentance and repair. The objective is not forgiveness. Rather it is a commitment to taking responsibility for our wrong doing and improving ourselves and our civilization. We seek to apologize to those we have harmed and to seek Divine mercy. The sound of the shofar, a rams horn is to be heard as the New Year commences and as the Day of Atonement comes to an end.                

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The Shofar’s Sound

Listen…
In the wind,
In the silence of your heart,
Across time marked by each generation,
Amazing us:
Crying out while birthing,
Crying out of the mouth of an infant,
Crying like passionate lovers,
Crying like mourners,
Like children on the playground,
Like soldiers on the killing grounds,
Like the lost,
Like the found.
Is it the voice of the Sh’Chinah?
God’s sheltering presence calling,
“I am waiting for you?”
Is it the silent voice of the hidden, ineffable Ein Sof?
Speaking to you, as to Elijah in his hidden cave,
Not in fire,
Not in wind,
But in delicate silence…

Listen… Hear the silent cry of Isaac bound,
The thunder of Sinai,
The commandments crashing at our feet,
Their broken shards kept forever in the tabernacle of our hearts.
Hear the bleating of the scapegoat,
The cry of Aaron’s repentance,
The silence of his grief…
Hear the fallen walls of Jericho,
The fallen walls of the Temple,
The cry of exile resonates from
Spain, Poland, the Pale,
Auschwitz, Buchenwald,
Hear the wailing of hostages and the weeping of Gaza’s children,
Hear us cry in the face of our own blindness and the sullen deafness of the world

Listen…
Hear the Laughter of Sarah,
The Song of Miriam,
The Psalms of David sing to you,
The Prayers of Judah the Prince,
The wisdom of Rambam and Rashi,
The joy of the Chassidim,
The laughter of Groucho,
Harpo’s silent melodies,
The jazz of Gershwin,
The wail of the Beastie Boys
Mix with the prayers at the Kotel,
The triumph and challenge of Herzl’s words,
The voices of Einstein, Salk, Golda, Steinem and Paley,
The voices of your parents call to you and
The voices of children command you to hear.

Listen…
Hear the voice of the holy of holies
Within your broken heart,
Hear the voice of those who love you and long for you,
Hear the voice of your own repentance,
Your cry for forgiveness,
Hear the voices of the Seraphim and Holy Beings
Crying “Holy, Holy, Holy!”
Hear the cries of suffering from Louisiana,
The cries of madness from Baghdad,
The cries of confusion and despair from Ramallah,
The cries of prayer in Jerusalem…

Listen…
Hear the wind and birdsong in the forests of the Cascades,
The music of your home, your life, the beating heart of time demands that you hear.
God is waiting for us.
How are we to answer?
No words will suffice.
We want to cry out, scream, whistle like the Shepard boy…
We open our hearts,
We pray,
We hear the Shofar’s sound.

Shards

“God loves a broken heart.”
– Nachman of Bratislava

Nachman was a mystic, a poet, a rabbi, a troubled genius, a Chassid who had no descendants, his gifts were given in the Eighteenth Century. Like his contemporary, Mozart, his life was short and his spirit was beautiful. His words were Kabbalah.

There is a creation myth in Kabbalah: In order to allow creation to occur God had to allow His spiritual presence to be withdrawn. (Creative Withdrawal is used by leaders to allow others to step forward. The results can be remarkable.)

So, God placed his presence into vessels to allow creation to occur. But what vessel could possibly contain the Divine. Thus, the vessels were broken. So, we can account for the brokenness of the world and, perhaps, the brokenness of our hearts.

Our imperfections, our impulses, our wading through loss, or cruelty, or grief, our encounters with wrongs, our capacity for blindness to evil contribute to this brokenness. We wail at the loss of those we loved. We cry out as we remember our own moments of selfishness…our animal selves. We battle with our double souls: Yetzer Tov – the good soul and Yetzer Hara – the evil (or animal) soul. We beat our breasts on Yom Kippur crying out for the wrongs we have done while we fear for our own existence. “For the wrongs we have committed,” we say thinking of the scapegoat released into the wilderness left alive for Bezalel. No matter how sincerely we repent, we know that our imperfections remain alive…bleating. Yet, we cannot shed ourselves of our Yetzer Hara. Without our animal natures we would not reproduce.

So, we seek to repair the broken world. We seek for the shards and try to rebuild the vessels. Like Japanese Kitzugi we seek to repair the vessels with gold to make something beautiful from brokenness. The Kabbalah teaches us that every shard that is lifted releases a divine spark.

We weep as we search for these broken shards. We weep as we seek this path. We are blinded by our tears. We are fearful. Until we remember Nachman’s wisdom. Our broken hearts are the shards. Our souls are the broken vessels. We rock and cry and pray. We seek paths for loving kindness and mercy..

David H. Fuks

Banana

                                                                         1.
                                                      Where the Hell am I?

After 24 years of working with and on behalf of children, I accepted an executive job working on behalf of elders. “I’ve always been a kid guy,” I said to my predecessor who recruited me. “You’re a Jewish guy and a people guy,” he responded. Having done every job three times in the children services arena, I agreed to give aging services a try.

I would have to learn my way around elders and their families. The residents complained about food. “The food is no good and the portions are too small,” a rather zaftig assisted living resident shared with me. “You better take good care of my mother,” an attorney who was on my Board of Directors warned me.  “I will treat her just as well as I would my own mother,” I tried to assure him. “That’s great,” he said. “How do you feel about your mother?”

I would have to climb a learning curve to qualify as a licensed Nursing Home Administrator. I would have to understand the strict regulations of Medicare and Medicaid. (The regulations are written as sentencing guidelines.) “Jesus Christ!” I said to my Preceptor, Berman. “Never heard of him,” Berman said with a smile.

The intensity began on my first day on the job. My predecessor, Mr. Al Mendlovitz, was saying good bye to the nursing home residents. They were assembled in a rather large communal living room. Al was leading them with Jewish summer camp songs while I sat quietly in the back of the room near the water fountain. A nurse’s aide brought a resident to sit next to me. She was blind and demented. I sat quietly as Al and the residents sang:

”Oh the cow kicked Nelly in the belly in the bard.
The cow kicked Nelly in the belly in the barn.
Yes, the cow kicked Nelly in the belly in the barn.
And the old man said it wouldn’t her any harm

As the residents clapped and laughed. The woman sitting next to me yelled, “Where the Hell am I?”

It was a great relief to me. I wasn’t the only one who felt this way.

                                                                                                 2.
                                                                                Betselem Elohim

I struggled a bit with my Jewish identity. When community members asked me what kind of a Jew I was, I answered, “I’m a serious Jew.” I thought this was a bit better than my usual response, “I practice Punch and Judaism.” I added, “The truth is, I’m Heterodox.”  I’m the reasonably well educated son of Holocaust survivors. (My father was an atheist and my mother was orthodox.) I can recite the liturgy, (even in my head when I’m swimming) and I can discuss Spinoza or Heschel.

Since I was working in a faith-based organization, I was determined to find a path to respond to our community’s constituents as serious. I was determined to find a way to respond to our elders, staff and family members from the point of view of Betselem Elohim…we are all made in God’s image. This was, for me, not an easy task.

I tried to see this in strangers as I walked through the community. It was much more difficult when driving. However, I recognize that anyone who is a passenger in my car is thankful to a higher power when our trip is over.

Regardless, I was attempting to take this point of view seriously. As I walked down a corridor, I tried to think, “Yes…yes…I suppose so…” when I encountered a gentleman sitting in the lobby of our nursing home. He was in a wheel chair. He was staring blankly as people walked past him. He was drooling and demented. He was heart breaking. How was this Bestelem Elohim?

Then it happened. A nurse walked up to him. She kneeled beside him. She wiped his chin. She spoke to him as though he understood every word. “There it is,” I thought.

                                                                         3.
                                                                  Banana

A few years later, I was asked to lead the Shofar program at the Rosh Hashanah service in the nursing home. It was an easy duty. A few blessings. A poem to be read and the blowing of the ram’s horn. This Jewish New Year service and the sound of the Shofar is a primal aspect of the holiday that triggers the visceral process of repentance which is completed on the final hour of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement ten days later. (My beloved spouse has indicated that I need more than ten days to atone. I do not disagree.)

I invited my youngest son, Ian, to join me for this service. He was 14 at the time. But, he knew the blessings and could get a decent tone from the ram’s horn. The service went well.

Rather than departing quickly, I invited Ian to join me in a visit to a resident with special needs. Mr. Levy was bed ridden due to a stroke. He also suffered from aphasia, he had lost the ability to speak with the exception of one word, banana.

We asked Mr. Levy if we could enter his room. “Banana,” he said nodding and smiling. He saw the Shofar. He nodded and smiled. Pointing his finger, he said, “Banana.”  He had pointed at a yarmulke, a skull cap worn during prayers. “Banana!” he demanded that we help him to wear the cap. We recited the blessings and blew the shofar. Mr. Levy smiled and wept. “Banana!” he exclaimed. “Amen,” said Ian. “You’re welcome,” I added.

As we were leaving the building, Ian said, “That was the most meaningful service I’ve ever attended.” I looked at my son and smiled. I said, “Banana.”

David H. Fuks

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